This is an odd one. The only whole house shut off is on the city side of my meter and the person from public works I talked to said only the city could operate it and if it were to break while I operated it I could be held financially liable.
Does anyone know of a ballpark price to get a plumber to install on my side of the meter?
I can’t imagine it would be more than a couple hundred bucks assuming they can find an accessible point for it. Mine is in an unfinished room at the corner of the basement where the main line comes in and replacing it took the plumber life twenty minutes.
You can ask the plumber about coordinating with the city for shutoff. Maybe they’d know a guy?
But definitely don’t mess with it if. In my case I couldn’t find my external shutoff when I needed that internal one replaced so I had the city come locate it for me. They uncovered the plate, tested the valve and it broke immediately. Fixing it was a major excavation. The city guy told me how lucky I was that I hadn’t found it and tested it myself.
Mine is in an unfinished room at the corner of the basement where the main line comes in and replacing it took the plumber life
RIP poor plumber
Crazy thing is, one of the methods plumbers use to install a shutoff valve if they can’t turn off the city point is to freeze the pipe before where the new shutoff valve is to be installed. I always thought that was wild.
Yes this is the way to go. I have a shutoff near the pipe that the city water comes in but the valve was nonfunctional. I had to schedule a plumber, then ask the city to shutoff my water on that day, the plumber came and replaced the valve, and the city came back to turn on the water. Basically the same process applies to you but with installing a valve rather than replacing one.
Mine comes in in our crawl space but I can’t get to where it comes in becasue of a sewer line that runs the width of the crawl and I can’t fit past it.
And I assume the line branches before it travels up into the walls? Or is there a chance it branches after it leaves the crawl space, in which case you could consider opening a wall for the valve.
Cutting a pipe and adding a valve is a really simple thing and should only be expensive to the extent that any plumbing job is expensive.
I would specifically ask for a quality 1/4 turn ball valve - there’s no point in cheaping out on that part when you’re mostly paying for labor. And as long as you’re doing that, you probably want two of them. For the same reason the city doesn’t want you touching theirs, you should have a shutoff that you actually use when you need to do plumbing work in the house, and one before that that you never touch unless it’s an emergency and you can’t shut off the other one.
For a bit more expense, you could consider an automatic shutoff leak detector. I have one called Phyn that keeps track of water usage, tests for pressure drops every night, and detects unusual flow patterns and can automatically shut it off.
There is a pretty slick automatic water shut off that you can put wireless sensors at places like outside of a sump pump well or in a tray under the hot water heater. If the sensors detect water, they tell the valve to shut. I think they run a couple grand all in, but it is cheaper than having to gut your basement because the sump pump failed during a downpour.
There are several. I have one as I mentioned in my comment: it’s called a Phyn Plus. It works with and without sensors. I have some in strategic places like under the water heater.
It actually caught a leak, although it wasn’t from the plumbing. It was rain getting into the chimney and dripping into a puddle in the boiler room that set off one of the sensors. I like the cable-style sensor they have – it’s like a 4-foot-long headphone cord, but the whole length is a water sensor, so if any part gets wet it goes off.
Had a pipe burst in a rental in Seattle. No shut off. I called the city and they came out and installed a shut off the same day.
Give em a call and see if they’ll put one in.
Last year a plumber charged me about $300 to have a shut off valve replaced. Took him about an hour.
While doing some repairs prior to closing on my house the previous owners found their shutoff didn’t close all the way and their plumber had a way of freezing the line in order to install a new shut off. I have no idea on the details aside from a 2nd hand retelling but I thought it sounded interesting at the very least.